We Rely On Your Support: This site is primarily supported by advertisements. Ads are what have allowed this site to be maintained for the past 12 years. We do our best to ensure only clean, relevant ads are shown, when any nasty ads are detected, we work to remove them ASAP. If you would like to view the site without ads while still supporting our work, please consider our ad-free Phoronix Premium. You can also consider a tip via PayPal.

Besides OpenWF support in Wayland being talked about and on the roadmap, another item that's been hotly discussed the past couple of days is about client side decoration support for the Wayland Display Server.

An interested user wrote to the Wayland mailing list to say that client side decoration support should be an absolute must. Basically this would allow individual programs to control the appearance, mapping, and functionality of its window(s) without necessarily being controlled by a window manager. The message in full can be read here.

Kristian Høgsberg, the creator of Wayland, shares a similar view on client-side decoration supports as well. Beyond giving applications more control, Kristian reminds us that under this model the entire window could be one texture so there can be bilinear filtering , etc, to improve the visual experience of the desktop.

The opposition to having client-side decorations in Wayland would that -- depending upon its actual implementation -- it may be harder to close or move hung/unresponsive applications. However, Kristian says those beliefs have been "blown out of proportion." As part of this latest round of mailing list talk, there's also been ideas proposed about other ways in addressing unresponsive applications running on Wayland.

Sam Spilsbury of Compiz on the other-hand, wrote this email as he's basically not in support of the current client-side decorations proposal. After reading that, there's another response by the thread's original author.

There was also another email where an individual wrote about his experiences with old windows systems and client side decorations. He went on to write how under his interpretation of it, there would be a bad user-experience and that server-side decorations are a better solution. This led to an explosion by Kristian over the miss-communication and FUD that comes up about client side decorations. There was also another blunt email in response to more Wayland FUD.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 10,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

The mission at Phoronix since 2004 has centered around enriching the Linux hardware experience. In addition to supporting our site through advertisements, you can help by subscribing to Phoronix Premium. You can also use our Amazon.com or NewEgg.com shopping links when making online purchases or contribute to Phoronix through a PayPal tip.